Migraine Disorder Diagnosis

After 7 months of keeping a food journal and going through allergy testing, my allergist decided that the weird “prickle sensations” and numbness that I experience in my face weren’t related to food at all and perhaps I should see a neurologist. Having already seen the Doctor at my local clinic, I found myself at Mass General Hospital in the middle of September. The doctor I saw there specializes in neurological pain and migraine disorders, which I didn’t know at the time.

After a rather long and through interview and some basic strength and balance tests we got on the topic of my headaches. The ones that I have had almost every day since I was a teenager. I’m 37 now. He asked another round of questions that followed the line of “when ___ was happening, did you have a headache?”. I explained to him that headaches were such a normal part of my life, that I didn’t even give them much thought unless they were unbearable, so I didn’t really know. He went on to tell me, that while he wasn’t sure about the weird prickling thing that was going on (but we would work on figuring that out too), he was sure I had migraine disorder. He went on to tell me that you aren’t supposed to have headaches every day, and we talked about my extended family members and he asked if I suffered motion sickness as a child etc, etc. I learned that it’s genetic and I could think of two other people in my family who likely have it. One is my dad, the other one of my brothers. I never considered that anything but the OH MY GOSH MY HEAD WILL EXPLODE headaches were migraines.

Only once in my life have I had an aura, and because I recognized what it was, I was prepared for the worst headache of my life. It never happened. He ordered a brain MRI, which he normally doesn’t do but the numbness and tingling/prickle thing concerned him and I am going for that later this month.

In the meantime I have been instructed to give up caffeine and will be taking a medicine to prevent the migraines from happening. We are at a stand still with that, as I am waiting for his coordinator to call me back regarding taking Topamax, and so far no caffeine hasn’t effected my daily headaches at all. I found this website looking for a migraine journal that I could keep track of all this mess in, and here I am.

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